When In Rome: The Promise (Not Kept)

The Italian Open didn't deliver the equal prize money it said would come in 2025.

Angelo Binaghi making a speech earlier this year at the Quirinal Palace in Rome. (Photo via Presidenza della Repubblica)

A little over two years ago, Angelo Binaghi made a big promise.

Binaghi, the president of the Federation of Italian Tennis (FIT), announced in April 2023 that his country’s biggest tournament—the Italian Open in Rome, officially called the Internazionali BNL d’Italia—would close a big gap and offer equal prize money for the first time in 2025.

From April 2023 coverage of the news in Italian newspaper La Stampa:

“By 2025,” adds Binaghi, “We will have a women's tournament with the same prize money as the men’s. We are not talking about small change, but 8 million and 300 thousand euros.”

Binaghi cited the chief executive of the tournament’s title sponsor, Elena Goitini of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, as a force behind the change. “We can make this big leap because the first female CEO of a big bank in Italy has provided us with the necessary resources,” Binaghi said. The federation’s prize money pledge was made in conjunction with an announcement that BNL had renewed its role as title sponsor through 2028.

The WTA responded to the Italian federation’s announcement news with delight in 2023. “With WTA's continued efforts to achieve equal prize money at all events, we are excited for the commitment that has been made by the Rome event to ensure this is in place by 2025,” the WTA told the Associated Press. “…We appreciate the unwavering commitment from the events who currently are paying equal prize money and again the commitment being made by Rome to make sure this is in place by 2025.”

The Relics of Roman History

Talk of equal prize money in tennis so often focuses on it being achieved at the majors in 2007—causing detractors of women’s tennis to point to the fact that the women don’t play an extended format at those events—but the disparities at tour events like Rome, where players compete in the same format for comparable ranking points, have persisted.

Rome’s prize money disparity hadn’t been built in a day. The Italian Open had some of the most infamous pay disparities in the early days of the Open Era, such as 1970 women’s champion Billie Jean King getting just $600 compared to $3,500 for men’s champion Ilie Nastase.

Understandably, several WTA players in 2023 still wished, after hearing the tournament’s promise about 2023, that equality would have come sooner. That year, the men’s champion (Daniil Medvedev) would receive €1,105,265 while the women’s champ (Elena Rybakina) only got €521,754.

“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa told The New York Times.

“It’s really frustrating,” Ons Jabeur chimed in. “It’s time for change. It’s time for the tournament to do better.”

Though they were slower than the women would want, Rome was acting slightly ahead of the curve. A few months later, in June 2023, the WTA announced that it was setting a “pathway to equal prize money” across its tour, including a requirement that all combined ATP-WTA 1000 events would offer equal prize money by 2027. Indian Wells, Miami, and Madrid already had offered equal prize money for years; Rome, Canada, and Cincinnati would have to catch-up.

Equal prize money was better late than never. And Rome had already made its public commitment for 2025, so there would be no issue…right?

I romani non erano pronti

Well, the 2025 Italian Open is now here, but the promised prize money is not. The Italian has closed the gap considerably after it had widened earlier this decade, but the prize money at this year’s tournament is still not close to equal, especially in the early rounds.

For receipts, here’s how they look on the respective ATP and WTA draw sheets at this year’s table, and then a table:

Men:

Women:

While failing to keep their promise, Rome is, at least, trending in the right direction after years of the gap widening post-pandemic, as I’ll show in the chart below.

It becomes unwieldy trying to measure every level of prize money over a span of time, so I somewhat arbitrarily picked quarterfinal prize money to track, starting in 2009 when both tours designated the tournament as a 1000-level event. (The WTA paid prize money in USD in the early years of this sample, so those numbers have been converted to Euros for uniformity using historical exchange rates.)

Ma perché?

Frustratingly, I haven’t been able to get any explanation for this shortcoming by the Italian Open. Representatives from the communications office of the Federation of Italian Tennis have not responded to several messages seeking comment on this topic this week. (I have not been able to reach BNL, either.) Notably, Angelo Binaghi did not speak to the NYT for their 2023 story on the Rome prize money topic, either.

Still, I decided to publish this now on Bounces rather than let the Italian federation run out the clock. As a rare independent journalist covering this sport, keeping the tennis powers-that-be accountable when they fail to keep a promise like this is something readers should be able to expect from me, so I wanted to do that even if I don’t have a satisfying explanation yet.

Maybe there’s a perfectly good reason why this promise was broken; maybe not.

If the publication of this story leads to an explanation coming, as I hope it does, I will share it with you as soon as I can.

White Smoke Clears Quickly From Windy City Pope

One last item from Rome, circling back to the framing of my last post: showing none of the indecisiveness of the top ATP players, the Papal Conclave wrapped up business before most seeded players in Rome—including the returning Jannik Sinner—had even taken court for their first matches. After just two days they picked a guy named Bob from Chicago who is, as it happens, an avid tennis fella.

“I consider myself quite the amateur tennis player,” Pope Bob said in an interview with the Augustinian Order. “Since leaving Peru I have had few occasions to practice so I am looking forward to getting back on the court [laughs]. Not that this new job has left me much free time for it so far.”

No word yet on if Pope Bob from Chicago chose to name himself “Leo” because Bjorn Borg, Victoria Azarenka, and Roger Federer all named their sons Leo in recent years…but I will assume yes until he says otherwise.

Thanks for reading Bounces! -Ben